University Daily Kansan
Wednesday, March 6. 1974
5
Film Features Screwball Comedy
By KENN LOUDEN
Ransan Reviewer
In 1894 the first and perhaps the best of the screwball comedies, Frank Capra's "It Happened One Night," was released to an enthusiastic public.
Screwball comedy refers to a film that combines visual humor, witty dialogue and freakish twists of fortune that are possible but highly unlikely. The comedies are romantic, idealistic and topical but hard to believe.
Optimism and entertainment summarize the purpose of a screwball comedy. The comedies were made for people in the 1930s during the depression, and the good ones such as "Happened One Night" made the people forget their problems.
Frank Capra had a quality that many directors of screwball comedies lacked. He
evoke pathos from his performers and direct it toward the audience.
Clark Gable portrays an out-of-work newspaperman who encounters a millionaire's runaway daughter, portrayed by Claudette Colbert, on a bus.
She is going to join a society parasite she plans to wed, gale. Decides to stick close to her and gather information on a firsthand account of all, "Society Girl's Flight to Happiness."
On the route to New York from Miami it becomes obvious that she is an incompetent rich girl who must rely on him. He finds lodgings for her, protects her from mashers and handles the finances. All he gets in return is the cold shoulder for a while.
Despite obvious differences in wealth, personality and social position they fall in with the average population.
Pacino Is Plaster Saint Among Corrupt Cops
"Serpico," starring Al Pacino, now showing at the Hillett II, is a cop story with a different twist. It's about an honest police officer who doesn't want to have any part of the graft and corruption that surrounds him.
By BYRON MYERS
Sericpo's first day on the street as a patrolman gave him an indication as to how things were going to be in the N.Y.P.D. He was being shown around by a senior patrolman who had received an award for "distinguished service." They went into a restaurant and were offered the special dinner they wanted, but Serpo wanted to order something different. When it was served to him he found it to be nedible fat.
The movie is based upon factual incidents that eventually led to the exposure of corruption within the New York City Police Department and the creation of the Knapp Commission, an institute created to be an investigator of police corruption and how they might be eliminated.
musclefulness sexuality and be discovers in her a person of warmth and compassion who is able to make sense of all things.
Serrico was ready to go to the management and make a complaint about the food. His senior told him that the food was free, that he shouldn't complain and that he should go along with the established policy. He said Serrico offered to pay for his own meal so that he could receive something edible but was warned not to do so.
The best scenes take place in a cabin where Gable registers them as husband and wife. Among these is a masculine striptease performed by Gable as he exudes the proper ways of man can understand. When he gets to his skis, Cohen takes a quick exit.
"That's the way it always been around here," his would-be mentor advised. "Just try to go along with it and don't rock the beat."
From then on Sperpico began to see that the only way for an honest man to avoid rocking the boat was to get off board and try to find another boat. So he asked to be transferred to planclothes division, but, as from bad to worse, the situation went from bad to worse.
Every time Serpico was transferred he seemed to be placed in a department that was just a little more corrupt than the one he had left. His honesty of心系cost him the friendship that usually goes along with working with other officers in the same unit. He was well known within the department as a whole, and within the it very nearly cost him his life.
The captain of the narcotics division with
Gable is not always right. In one amusing scene where he explains the correct way to hitchhike, carefully using the proper thumb gestures, he is completely unsuccessful.
whom he ended up working told him, “Your fellow officers won't have to lay a hand on you if they want you killed. All they have to do is just be a little slow about responding to your call for help tomorrow and sooner or later you will come here when you need them you'll get shot.”
Sure enough—that was what happened; Serpico's fellow officers pegged him as being unreliable, and the word preceded him wherever he went. At the movie's climax two of Serpico's fellow officers on a tour of the city shot in the face by a big-time narcotics dealer. Unfortunately for all wrongdoers concerned, he was only shot with a 22 pistol, and the wound was not fatal. What's more, the wound, incurred while in the line of duty, gave him a sort of heresy status and made it impossible to be receptible to those who heard his testimony.
The theme that tied the film together was Serpico's battle with bureaucracy. From the outset he was faced with a police department that was interested in maintaining order, but that lived in deadly fear of any outside knowledge of the machinations of the police department. Consequently, every time Serpico tried to institute reforms within a particular department of the P.D. or to even take over control in the police department, he was stymied.
As a result, Serpico was eventually forced to take his case outside the department and reveal his story to the New York Times. His superiors were dumbfounded at an officer's doing this (after all—police protect their own, you know). This action also meant the police arresting him as a police officer and almost caused him to be sent to join his ancestors.
The film was fairly accurate in its depiction of a corrupt police organization. Its only fault seemed to be that it made Serpaco a plaster saint. If the man was still alive, he would then be he was a candidate for sainthood—something one seldom sees these days.
Colbert uses a little feminine ingenuity and raises her dress just enough to reveal a shapely leg. A passing automobile immediately stops.
"It Happened One Night" led to a great procession of romantic screwball comedies, but its superiority is demonstrated by its being the only film ever to win the five Academy awards-best film, best screenplay, best director, best actor and best actress.
Taken in its entirety, I would recommend this film. The acting is good, and the situations portrayed are quite accurate. The actors were well-represented that nobody is perfect—not even Serpio—and that not all police officers are bad—not even New York police officers.
The film will be shown at 7:30 and 9:30 tonight in Woodruff Auditorium. Unfortunately that is the same night as the KU-KState basketball game. I recommend that anyone going to the game attend the later showing. It's worth the time.
A revival of sorts took place in Woodruff Auditorium Monday night, about 300 Clark Kents came to relieve the adventures of the most super hero of all-Superman.
Their Faith in Superman Persists
Believers Flock to Revival
We all laughed, but most of us still believed. As Weisinger said, the fact that Cinderella's one glass slipper didn't turn back into rags the way the rest of her clothes did at midnight doesn't destroy the story—not if we want to believe.
Many had questions for the featured revivalist, Mort Weisberg, former editor of Superman Comics. But it was evident from the crowd's impatience that most came to see episodes from the Superman television series of the fifties.
Not having seen the Superman series for over a year, she was still disappointed by its poor writing and lack of simplicity was hilarious, such as when Superbaby's parents shot him from Krypton in "The Chronicles of Narnia."
THE IMMENSE POPULARITY of Superman, Weisinger said, has been due in part to a lack of real-life super heroes. Avator Charles Lindbergh belongs to this category. The astronauts prevent one of them from becoming a super hero, and swimmer Mark
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Spitz is a walking commercial, he said.
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According to Weisinger, Superman, who possessed the physical strength of Tarzan, the intelligence of Sherlock Holmes and the morality of Jesus, has filled the vacuum
Although I've collected about 200 Superman comics, I've never thought they
represented the genuine Superman. To me, Superman died 15 years ago, Paradoxically, he was not killed by an arm enemy with kryptonite; he died by his own hand.
IT'S DIFICULT YET today to believe that the invincible Man of Steel is dead; however, he probably wouldn't be of much use to our increasingly cynical society.
B. Y. O. Beer